Francophone Perspectives on Empathy and Care Today
Friday 14th of June 2024, Queen’s University Belfast
Study Day
Call for Papers
Keynote speakers:
Prof Natalie Edwards (Bristol) and Dr Jasmine Cooper (Cambridge)
Recent global events have made extraordinary demands on our capacities for empathy and care at an individual and societal level. While current developments are often classed under the qualifying couplet ‘unprecedented times’, even the most cursory of glances at contemporary politics would reveal a near-constant accumulation of both small- and large-scale disasters which require a reorganisation of our structures of thought and feeling consonant with a present which does in fact set a precedent. Subjects previously occupying minority positions are therefore becoming increasingly visible, be it in the wake of #metoo, the ongoing refugee crisis, class warfare, the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights and bodily autonomy, and the climate crisis. Precipitated by these developments, our increased awareness of the range of subject positionalities has given rise to affective and political responses. Individuals are encouraged to develop their capacity for empathy by listening to the stories of others and attempting to imagine themselves in the shoes of those others and in doing so, to learn how to be attentive to and to care for others.
The proposed study day draws on a kaleidoscopic understanding of care refracted through the lenses provided by multiple thinkers, including Pascale Molinier’s definition of care as ‘ne peut pas ne pas’, Sandra Laugier’s understanding of care ‘as attention to ordinary life’, and Joan Tronto’s proposal that ‘we can recognize care when a practice is aimed at maintaining, continuing, or repairing the world’. We acknowledge a conceptual structure of empathy and care that moves through recognition, attention, action, and reflection. This study day proposes to bring into dialogue voices which question and expand the limits of a politics of empathy by asking a series of structuring questions:
· Is our own engagement with empathy and care generative and is there any political need for it to be so?
· Does empathy and the provision of care in the form of sustained attention hinder structural change?
· In attending to the Other, how do we care for the self?
We invite proposals for papers which engage with the contemporary Francophone realm and pertain to the spheres of literature, visual art, film, philosophy, critical theory and beyond. We also welcome proposals from activists and practitioners. Below, we offer a series of themes which we wish to open out. The list could serve as a springboard, yet it proposes by no means to be exhaustive, and we invite proposals from themes outside the ones listed below. If your paper does engage directly with one or more of the themes listed, please feel free to indicate this in your abstracts.
§ Affect/effect: The relationship between empathy, care, and their adhering feelings
§ The ‘nanny state’ and government intervention
§ Parenting, childlessness, and (self)-care
§ Queer kinship and new, ‘radical’ forms of empathy and care
§ Temporalities of empathy and care
§ Ecologies of empathy and care
§ Spaces of care and lieux de mémoire
§ L’éthique du ‘care’ in France: translation and translatability
§ Beyond politics: the limits and limitations of empathy and care
—
We welcome submissions from colleagues at all career stages. Please send a 250-300 word abstract in English or French for 20-minute papers as well as a short author bio (100-150 words) to the study day organiser, Dr Adina Stroia (a.stroia@qub.ac.uk) by Friday, the 3rd of May 2024.
We aim to inform you of the outcome shortly thereafter. The languages of the study day will be English and French.
This is an in-person event. We plan to produce a special issue based on themes emerging from the papers presented at the study day.
Organised by: Dr Adina Stroia (QUB).